[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

56 WITH NATIVES IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC

to their homes in due time. These planters, I am
happy to say, find hands enough, as a rule, while the
natives take care not to go to a French plantation if
they can help it. The system of recruiting is very
simple. The cutter anchors at some distance off-
shore, and a dynamite cartridge is exploded to
announce her arrival; some time afterwards one of
the whale-boats goes ashore, all the crew armed to the
teeth, while the other boat lies a short distance off,
to watch the natives, and to cover the retreat of
those in the first boat in case of attack. The planter,
as a rule, stays on board his cutter. These warlike
practices are really unnecessary in many places, but
as one never knows what indiscretions the last
recruiter may have committed, and as the natives
consider all whites as belonging to one organization,
it is the part of prudence to follow this old recruiting
rule.

I will not pretend to say that the natives will
never attack without provocation. Even Cook, who
certainly was both careful and just, was treacherously
attacked in Erromanga, for the Melanesian is blood—
thirsty, especially when he thinks himself the
stronger. But to-day it may be stated as a certainty
that no attack on a recruiting—ship or on any white
man occurs without some past brutality on the part
of a European to account for it. As one of the
Governments does nothing to abolish kidnapping, and
as the plantations go to ruin for want of labour, it
would be to the interest both of the settlers and of
the natives to abolish the present recruiting system